nected with it, for as the birds are armed with fourinch spurs of razor sharpness, very little sport attaches to the contest, one or both birds usually being killed within a few minutes after they enter the pit. The townspeople are inordinately proud of their local fighting-cocks, boasting of their prowess as a Bostonian brags of the "Braves" or a New Yorker of the "Giants" and always being ready to back them to the limit of their pocketbooks.

An overwhelming majority of the Filipinos are farmers. But though the American Government has made every effort to improve agricultural conditions in the islands by sending out experts and machinery, by the establishment of agricultural schools and farm bureaus, and by the free distribution of seeds, the Filipino peasant farmer has not made the progress which might be looked for in nearly four centuries of white man's rule. Though rice is the bread of the people and is grown in great quantities, the peasants still prepare the land for planting with an implement which can be called a plow only by courtesy-a sort of pointed wooden snag, sometimes tipped with iron and sometimes not, drawn by a carabao whose movements are as leisurely as those of its owner. In order to give it a start over the weeds which would otherwise strangle it, rice is first planted in seed-beds and, when partly grown, is transplanted by hand, it being by no means uncom

These are among the most extraordinary examples of hydraulic engineering in existence, being far more remarkable than the celebrated "hanging gardens" of Babylon.

RICE TERRACES BUILT BY THE IFUGAOES IN THE MOUNTAIN

PROVINCE, LUZON

mon to see scores of women and children squatting on their heels in the shallow water of the paddy-fields and working to the music of a small string band with which they keep time, so that the faster the music plays the faster they work. Mr. Dean C. Worcester, acknowledgedly one of the foremost authorities on the Philippines, states that orchestras which have the reputation of maintaining a rapid tempo are in great demand during the planting season because of the increased amount of rice set. Imagine the agricultural prodigies that might be performed with the coöperation of an American jazz band! When harvest time comes around the grain is usually separated from the chaff by the family and the neighbors of the ricegrowers, who put in several pleasant and not overstrenuous days leaning against a long rail, set loosely in supports so that it will revolve, smoking, gossiping, and singing as they thresh out the grain with their feet.

What I have said above refers, of course, only to the small peasant farmers who form the bulk of the agricultural population. The larger landowners, on the contrary, have eagerly availed themselves of the agricultural devices introduced by the Americans, the primitive Malay methods having been entirely supplanted on the large plantations by steel plows, tractors, and threshing-machines. The fact remains, however, that modern agricultural methods are still the

exception instead of the rule, so that the Philippines, which should be one of the great rice-exporting countries of the world, are compelled to import it.

To see rice-growing in its most picturesque and interesting form one must journey to the country of the Ifugaos in Central Luzon. These people, who up to the time of the American occupation were inveterate head-hunters, are under a heavy agricultural handicap by reason of living in a region as mountainous as Switzerland. Yet on slopes as steep as a church roof they cultivate their rice on a vast series of terraces, which are held in position by stone retaining walls laid without mortar or cement of any kind and which in places ascend the mountainsides for more than three thousand feet. It will give you some idea of the sort of masonry required to withstand the weather conditions when I mention that in this region thirty-eight inches of rain has fallen in twenty-four hours and seventy-two inches in five days. The rice terraces of the Ifugaos are among the most extraordinary examples of primitive hydraulic engineering in existence, being, when the climatic and physical conditions are taken into consideration, far more remarkable than the celebrated "hanging gardens" of Babylon.

IV

Now that the trail of our narrative has led us into the mountains, suppose that we pause long enough